1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is reusable and recyclable storage and shipping containers for fluorescent lamp tubes, particularly linear fluorescent lamps commonly used in commercial and industrial fixtures.
2. Description of Related Art Including Information Disclosed Under 37 CFR 1.97 and 37 CFR 1.98.
Recycling systems and methods to manage failed (spent), linear fluorescent tubular lamps, the most common source of artificial light, are becoming increasingly vital as societies seek to reduce the devastating impacts of pollution. All levels of government and industry struggle to prevent persistent mercury contamination from the improper handling and disposal of waste lamps. It is apparent that existing storage technology, shipping and transportation and disposal infrastructure cannot meet existing industry needs or government regulations, let alone minimize pollution, stem the bio-accumulation of mercury or prevent the exposure and contamination of people and property.
Mercury, a proven neurotoxin, is reported to seep into human bodies unwittingly, through chronic, low-level and incidental exposure, which in the long run can trigger a myriad of health problems. Mercury exposure has been reported as linked to increased risk of heart attack, birth defects and other neurological disorders. Exposure to mercury vapor (found in used fluorescent lamps) is reported to damage the central and peripheral nervous systems, lungs, kidneys, skin and eyes. It is also mutagenic and affects the immune system.
It has been suggested that a complete ban on the substance should be implemented. This argument, however impractical, is not completely without merit when one considers how irresponsibly waste mercury products are managed. The recovery rates of waste fluorescent lamps, even in the most environmentally conscious jurisdictions, are below 50%. Some jurisdictions, such as Ontario, could not legitimately boast a recovery rate above 25%. This gap between the number of lamps sold and the amount recovered numerically accounts for part of a steady bio accumulation of toxic mercury, in an industrially altered form, in an uncontrolled fashion, well above its naturally occurring rates.
Reportedly there are a multitude of current and future health and economic consequences to this steady release of poison. A powerful example in Ontario is the detailed and specific recommendation by the Ministry of the Environment with respect to fish consumption. Fish in Ontario are polluted with mercury and other toxins. The ministry regularly releases extensive sport fish consumption advisories. For example, the current, 294 page long, advisory is specific with respect to the sizes of fish, species of fish, lakes, parts of lakes, regions, times of the year, types of contamination, fish anatomy and so on. Quotes from the “Guide to Eating Sport Fish 2009-2010” illustrate the scope of concern well:                “ . . . eating contaminated fish regularly may result in accumulation of contaminants in the body to levels that can become a health concern.”        and,        “Mercury is the cause of most consumption advisories in inland water bodies. Mercury is evenly distributed in fish flesh and there is nothing you can do to reduce or remove it”        
Studies show that mercury from man-made sources is finding its way into our ecosystems, polluting our environment, harming our health, destroying renewable resources, compromising our food supply and ruining viable industries and damaging the economy as a whole.
The problem is that mercury is a very useful substance. It is unique in that in its solid form it actually has many of the properties of a liquid, including the ability to form a vapor. It is irreplaceable for a variety of industrial and commercial uses. Mercury makes artificial lighting systems much less dependent on energy than non-mercury sources. For example, incandescent and halogen light sources (non-mercury) create between 10-20 lumens per watt, while linear fluorescent T8 and T5 sources are able to emit 80 to 100 lumens per watt, 4 to 10 times more efficient. The use of mercury in linear fluorescent lamps substantially reduces our consumption of electricity, the generation of which is a major source of greenhouse gases and other air contaminants including mercury. Furthermore, if reliable systems and methods are implemented and regulations enforced, it is conceivable that societies could recover more than 99% of the mercury used in high efficiency lighting systems with the technologies already existing. However, the necessary clean energy that mercury prohibition would require cannot be created. Essentially, banning mercury use would be trading a pollution stream which can be mitigated for one that cannot.
All known fluorescent lamps manufactured to date contain mercury. If the lamp is not destroyed at a facility equipped with mercury management capabilities, the mercury will be released into the environment. There will be a mercury vapor release into the air when the glass envelope is breached by cracking, sail failure or general breakage. Mercury solids will form and embed in the glass or melt together into particulates. The small solid particles will immediately find their way into the environment. Finally, the mercury embedded in the glass will leach out slowly over time.
The realization of this steady contamination has given rise to specialized facilities which mechanically break up the waste lamps in processes which separate the various materials and contain and confine the mercury. Eventually the mercury is retorted and sold back into the raw materials market. There are a multitude of competing technologies which are offered as reliable and effective. Because the cost to process the lamps is significantly higher than the value of the extracted material, the end user must bear the additional costs to process the waste and the risk of doing it properly. This is called extended user responsibility.
The locus of the problem is not in producing the lamps, shipping new lamps to users or processing spent lamps to retort mercury. These activities are all performed by professionals. The heavy contamination occurs in the phase when the lamps operational life has ended and it needs to get to a waste facility with mercury management capabilities. Essentially, this once asset has depreciated completely, lost its commercial value, and been transformed into a toxic liability that needs to be stored, transported and disposed of properly. At this crucial moment, the toxic liability is often in the hands of someone or some organization which has little training at the site of work and minimal knowledge or understanding of what is at stake. Furthermore, this person or corporation, unlike their professional counterparts at lamp manufacturing and disposal facilities, stands only to lose money. The philosophy of extended user responsibility in the absence of affordable and properly managed storage and handling solutions, along with inadequate awareness creation on site, combined with minimal enforcement of government regulations translates into poor recovery rates and a steady stream of toxic pollution across the world.
It is in this stage of lamp life that the chance of contamination increases exponentially. Spent lamps are leaned against walls, stuffed back into original packaging in a hurried manner, thrown into garbage bins, dumped at waste transfer facilities or bulk stored for years. Most often, lamps are stuffed into random cardboard boxes with the glass jackets impacted upon and/or pressing up against one another. This is a particularly vulnerable position and should be avoided. When they are booked for a recycling effort they are shipped in a much less stable individual and bulk packages than when shipped to customers by the original equipment manufacturers. When the lamps glass jackets are packed next to one another breakage is impossible to avoid. This is exacerbated further when multiple boxes containing spent lamps packaged in this manner are stacked on top of each other for bulk shipping on pallets.
Furthermore, the people who are typically conducting the shipping and handling are rarely aware that the air inside a fluorescent lamp is under pressure. On some occasions, the destruction of a fluorescent lamp will create a minor explosion. If they are stored in a box with the glass jackets touching each other the chances of creating an explosion increases. Furthermore, the breakage of one lamp can set off a chain reaction explosion of all lamps in the box and even on a pallet.
Due to irregular and random bulk storage and shipping methods these explosions and contaminations can occur at any point in the supply chain; including the lamp user's facility, the trailer or shipping vehicle, consolidation points, and the lamp recyclers receiving warehouse and initial sorting area. Maintenance personnel, electrical contractors, delivery truck drivers, recycling facility receivers, and the people who clean shipping trailers can be consistently exposed to low levels of mercury vapor over long periods. As a result of this inconsistent packaging and shipping, dangerous levels of mercury slowly accumulate unknowingly into various real assets. Concrete, a porous substance and common building material is particularly vulnerable. For fluorescent lamp recycling facilities, who continuously receive and process haphazardly packed fluorescent lamps, it is only a matter of time before the buildings become so contaminated with mercury that remediation is impossible and the building has to be destroyed or left vacant, there are multiple examples of this in the United States.
The lamp manufacturers have well established and effective systems to deliver newly manufactured lamps to customers. Most of these rely upon factory assembled packaging of multiple units together combined with shipment in bulk to maintain and ensure breakage free (including cracking and seal failures) shipment and use. Special packaging and handling has long been the norm. Principal methods today involve parallel placement of multiple tubes into the long sides of rectangular containers or boxes. Individual tubes are separated from each other by thin individual sleeves or complex 3-part spacers but generally treated as a single bulk unit. These methods take into account that “new” or unused lamps are ‘less toxic’. Cost effectiveness and minimal breakage is assured by volume production, tight packing, separation of glass jackets, and special handling along with high unit count packages delivered to the outlet and then the user preferably in those bulk situations. It is estimated that more than 99% of new lamps travel from factory to the site of actual use without being broken.
These methods rely extensively upon the careful handling and organization of the bulbs and all of the required packaging components throughout the transit time from individual production to actual use or very close to it. Furthermore, original equipment manufacturers never package lamps with glass jackets touching one another due to the exponentially increased chance of breakage and explosion during shipping and handling.
Unfortunately, ‘old\ used or spent tubes contain and will release toxic mercury vapor when the glass jacket is compromised. Reuse of original packaging, the most common form of storage for waste lamps, is problematic at best and impossible in many instances.
Examples of effective new lamp packaging are shown in Sheppard U.S. Pat. No. 2,564,729 issued Apr. 21, 1951 and the more modem equivalent trade packaging which uses a 2-part end piece of essentially the same configuration without the fold lines 36 and 37.
Another is shown in Lawrence U.S. Pat. No. 5,553,708 issued Sep. 10, 1996 which encases each lamp in a protective tube and then close-packs the assembly in a shipping container.
These factory systems are impossible to replicate in a storage room or construction site as spent lamps start their processing in a highly disorganized state. Moreover, most maintenance personnel will go through a box of lamps over a period of time and will not wish to mix spent lamps with new lamps creating a storage void during that period.
Furthermore, most lighting upgrades remove tubes which are of a wider diameter (T12, T17) and replace them with more efficient lamps of a lesser overall diameter (T8, T5).
Thus, reuse of packaging during an upgrade is limited to a low percentage of the waste lamps. In these scenarios the boxes are reused but the spacers and systems to prevent the glass jackets from pressing against one another, found in Sheppard and Lawrence 165 (U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,564,729 and 5,553,708 respectively) are absent creating the conditions for a mass explosion and release of mercury vapor.
It has been found that collection, storage and return of failed bulbs to any recycling facility in an undamaged condition is a significant challenge despite ongoing efforts to avoid mercury contamination and increase the diversion of waste from landfill. Much damage results from the rough use of inappropriate, but handy, existing packaging without all internal components, mixing parts and incorrectly, partially filled containers and storing waste lamps with the glass envelopes touching one another. The result is that many failed bulbs still end up in landfills and that those who wish to recycle often end up contaminating their own facility or that of others.
Experience tells us that these factors add greatly to both the percentage of improperly disposed of lamps, instances of contamination and dangerous mercury releases.
Various efforts have been made to address the problem, as shown in the prior art, but most only address the symptom, namely the release of mercury from breakage during shipping and storage of lamps. The assumption of the prior art is that this accidental destruction is dangerous yet unavoidable given existing personnel and equipment on site and that the solution needs to manage and contain minor yet continuous releases of mercury vapor. U.S. Pat. No. 7,631,758 issued Dec. 15, 2009 on Stennes is an example of concern for mercury contamination and an acceptance of unavoidable, wide spread, consistent breakage of failed lamps. Furthermore, U.S. Pat. No. 7,631,758 does not address the single most important function of glass tube storage and shipping: preventing the glass jackets from touching one another during shipping, handling and storage.